Hosting Your Own SciPop Event!

Here are some recommendations for planning your own SciPop event:

Align your topics and presentation dates with trending themes. We carefully reviewed book and movie schedules for high-impact events to select presentation dates likely to draw the largest audiences. For example, HBO’s Game of Thrones usually starts its regular season between late March and mid-April. As such, ‘A Song of Ice and Fire and Chemistry’ was scheduled for mid-March when fandom excitement and pre-season media was likely to be at its highest. Fan sites, along with entertainment or genre websites provide convenient lists of key premiere dates for movies, TV shows, comic books and graphic novels, videogames, etc. (see below).

Be aware of parking and space considerations

If you’re going to record your events and post them online, make sure to make them accessible (e.g. captioned), and that you get image releases from anyone appearing in the film

Create your own publicity checklist and speaker guidelines to guarantee a cohesive timeline and structure for your event

Be prepared to mentor speakers with regard to effective interactive teaching strategies. Some of our presenters were not immediately comfortable with building in two interactions. Be prepared to give them examples of intriguing and thought-provoking questions they can ask at various points throughout their presentations. One example of audience interaction from the talk about Breaking Bad was having the audience vote on whether they would or would not place bet. After the vote the speaker explained how people’s votes related to game theory.